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Today's Features

For many years when winter visitors to Colorado called us to inquire about where they could see rosy-finches, we would either take them or send them to the top of Squaw Mountain to visit the Swanlunds.

When we were faced with this request recently, we didn’t know a really “sure spot” to send these visitors.

Last week I mentioned that our friend Margie Wing had called to report the first mountain bluebirds had returned to Indian Hills on Tuesday, Feb. 12. For lack of space, I said there would be more about them this week. Little did I know that would be the last conversation I would have with Margie. After a brief, courageous fight with cancer, Margie left this world on Friday, Feb. 15. I hope she is surrounded with bluebirds, hearing their soft, sweet warbling song.

Our friend Karel Buckley brought us an article recently from the New York Times on littering that was especially concerned with the use of plastic shopping bags. It contained some very pertinent information and reminded me of the early days of recycling here in Colorado.

Several times each winter, we receive phone calls from someone who has just seen a “large beautiful bird” at their feeder, which they have never seen before. They describe the bird, and I say, “Yes, that’s a northern flicker.” To which their usual reply is, “Oh no, it’s not a flicker; I see them around all summer, but they are not this big or here in the winter.”

For some time now, the birds at our feeders have been nervous, flying into the prickly thickness of a nearby blue spruce or darting into the lilac bushes every time anything moves in the yard or even inside the window. Such behavior, especially in cold, snowy weather, can mean only one thing. There is a predator of some kind working in the area. But what kind? That is the question.

Ames Rau called us last Sunday to say that he had been down at Bear Creek Lake Park, where he had witnessed a red-tailed hawk refurbishing its nest. It may seem odd that any birds are preparing to nest when we are experiencing well below freezing temperatures and several inches of snow cover the ground, but it is a common practice for the large resident hawks and owls to do so.